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I guess I might have a flawed sample, but any time I asked any capable PKer a mechanics question, I got a decent answer. Unless they happened to personally hate me. And I always, to the best of my ability, provided an in-depth answer to mechanics questions. I have a hard time imagining this has really changed and people became information misers, but I guess anything is possible.
And I know there's a huge barrier to entry. I kind of started with those words. I also said you can't drop that barrier without gimping the game's highest paying customers and turning combat as a whole on its head. If anything, Imperian bravely took steps in that direction, so that's where I'd look for guidance. But in no way is it a simple issue. The fact remains that you CAN learn and that it's not really harder to get into combat now than it was in years past. It might not be as easy as it should be in order to generate more new PKers, but this complexity is the same thing that originally drew the current PK cadre in.
While I agree with this, the way its implemented has to be carefully considered. If you make it too good, you throw class balance to the wolves and end up with time bombs required for all classes. That's not super fun to fight. You make it too bad, and it will just never be used, which invalidates the work.
If you can find that middle ground, I bet you'd see a lot more people active and involved in combat which would be good.
Anyway, @Ezalor, you're very much right about the whole endgame thing. These days there's so many ways to get double or triple experience gain - chalices, xp_gain artifacts, yellow ylem orb, great hunts/double xp promotions, xp increase from various other promotions, higher xp gain areas (like xaanhal and tiyen esityi)...the list goes on. Then there's the things that make getting kills easier - red ylem orb and amulets, the ylem amulet that increases all of your stats by 1 but doesn't stack with artifacts and blue ylem orb for additional defense.
Really, getting to level 100 is easier than it has ever been and will likely keep getting easier.
(though that's not really a viable kill route)
There are other issues that exist like several DIabolist nerfs and such and how affliction combat has a higher learning curve (y'gotta understand the stacks, mon) and how tracking is difficult in Imperian compared to Aetolia (things don't cure in order and only some have third party messages), but on the whole affliction combat is rare, unelss you're tossing out 2 venoms every 1.54 seconds like a few Wardancers I know.
With a .250 second lag and no artifacts, I've never flirted with the idea of being good at one-on-one PvP (though there will be cases out there of people having been competitive, I'm no outlier), so as strictly an outside looking in, the whole idea of server-side curing seems absurd to me. If the barrier for entry is too high then lower it, don't give everybody a bloody step ladder.
This would allow for slower user systems and, supposedly, help mediate the disparity that can be caused by different locales having different amounts of lag.
Affliction classes are actually suffering at the moment because of the server-side curing being incredibly fast and near perfect in many aspects.
It's successful in that many people that weren't previously involved in combat are, but I think people aren't realizing that you'd still need to throw together an offense to compete and IRE isn't going to code a server-side offense for you. Just like any system, it can help you survive. Citadel certainly helps me survive and I don't have to worry about it crapping out on me but I still had to modify/update my Sentinel offense, create my Lycanthrope offense, and I'm still working on my Syssin offense.
Good curing isn't the only entry into combat, you'd have to code an offense too.
One thing to keep in mind, though. Currently, the amount of combat spam is enough to grind certain clients to a halt unless you have a very powerful computer (I'm specifically thinking of zmud and cmud). I don't know how popular those clients are these days, but there was a time when they were the thing to use. Slowing down combat would also, theoretically, lessen the amount of streaming text a client has to handle, making client selection more an aesthetic or personal choice than 'well, this is what my computer can handle'.
And that's a good point far as clients go. But as with my latency, you'd have to identify how many people client lag was affecting, and whether they were doing enough to optimize their systems.
@Zun I feel your pain. My system is... not well put together, so even though my connection is fine, there's still a 2second lag after every other attack I do. That means that I either fight with no system or never lock anyone ever.